Another Game in Town. Keep an Open Mind. (Oh, Come on. Try.)

By Fred Bruning

June 21, 2026

Opposite body shops and service stations there was a rutted sandlot where boys gathered to play baseball, wicked grounders bouncing off the gritty surface into faces and chests and other places where it hurt most and teammates would roar at that, oops there goes your future, don’t tell your wife, c’mon, stop complaining, batter up.

We were battle-ready on those bright Brooklyn summer mornings when September and school seemed as far away as adulthood and all that mattered was that nine of us showed up – somebody get Tommy Carlina; Mike Kolk on the way? – to meet a team of tough kids from another neighborhood who would arrive laughing and shoving one another and nodding toward us and whispering and then laughing some more.

They were roughnecks, all right, and they were good, too, which didn’t seem fair, we, nice boys, having been assured at church and home that might doesn’t make right. Blessed are the meek said the Bible, maybe the world had another opinion?

The games went on and on and the other guys usually departed victorious, bats over shoulders, with a sort of swagger and assurance that boys like us never would manage, should we have been inclined to try.

Defeat did nothing to diminish our love for baseball, though, for the hours we imagined ourselves Furillo, Snider, Reese, Robinson, Hodges, when we ran down flies and legged out bunt singles like it was Ebbets Field not some scrubby sandlot, Schaefer Beer on the scoreboard and Campanella, warming up Erskine or Preacher Roe. Hooray for the Dodgers, and the same for us.

Only one thing threatened.

Soccer.

There was no way of predicting but some days, deep into the game, suddenly would appear men in cars (cars!) wearing shorts (shorts!) speaking some foreign language or maybe English but not any English we could understand.

Before you know it they were on the field, kicking a ball around as though we didn’t matter – duck! – until one, thick legs, chest hair, dark beard, gestured with his thumb to warn our time was up, clear out, no backtalk, take a hike.

Aw, nuts.

Stupid game, soccer.

That’s what we said on the way home, what is it anyway, running all over the place, dopey-looking ball, bouncing it off your head – crazy – and no hands allowed, and forget scoring, doesn’t look like it happens, they can keep it.

This brings us to the World Cup and a tricky exchange with my son, a serious and well-versed soccer devotee.

In a text noting a rare Mets win, my son also celebrated the first U.S. tournament victory, 4-1, against Paraguay.

Wise guy, I responded, “hockey, right?”

This would be a reference to the familiar critique by fellow lunkheads that wonders how anyone can watch a contest with so much movement and so little payoff?

“Don’t be a hater, Dad,” said my son.

Here is where things should have ended, but, no, I went on, advancing the theme of soccer as inscrutable and possibly un-American.

“Pickleball?”

“Quoits?”

My daughter was on the same string with no better judgment than her father.

“Quidditch?” she wondered, advancing Harry Potter.

“Croquet,” I concluded.

Oh, what fun – but not apt to draw a nomination for the Mark Twain humor prize from my son, who said he was signing off.

Can we blame him?

Like people always do when not understanding something, I went for the old takedown, for a little bit of razzing, a touch of ridicule, even a slight, stealthy dash of always-handy xenophobia.

Unbecoming.

“I really wasn’t offended,” my son said the next day. “But I do love the sport.”

I didn’t get into my sandlot story, chased off the field by men with foreign accents, wearing shorts, just when I was coming to bat, bottom of the ninth, Pee Wee Reese, tying run on second, Ebbets on its feet, not exactly a psychological trauma, I admit, and you’d think 70 years was enough time to put things in perspective, but I move slowly.

Promise, though, I will be on best behavior during the World Cup and not again parade my ignorance.

Soccer, fine, no more wisecracks, trust me, Scout’s honor, great game, lesson learned.

But pickleball?

Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive